Recent Big Bang Evidence May Be Wrong

Gravitational Waves and Inflation May Be Wrong

The excitement has hardly died down before theorists have begun to mutter that there could be another explanation

• The Physics arXiv Blog in The Physics arXiv Blog

Last week, the world of science was ablaze with the news that astrophysicists had found the first evidence of ripples in spacetime from the instants after the Big Bang. The discovery of these gravitational waves would be big news by itself but there was another aspect to this work that was even more significant.

The work also found crucial evidence for a process known as inflation: that in the instants after the Big Bang the universe expanded explosively—by some 20 orders of magnitude in a fraction of a second—making it the size we see today.

But even before the sound of champagne corks popping has died down, theorists are beginning to question the new result. Everyone agrees that the data shows important evidence of gravitational waves. The question is whether these waves could have been created after inflation, rather than before it. If so, then they do not provide any evidence that the early universe expanded so quickly and the celebrations have been premature.

First some background. One of the great challenges for cosmologists is to explain why the universe is the size we see today. They known that the universe is about 14 billion years old so it must have grown to its current size in that time.

But when astronomers measure the universe’s rate of expansion, they quickly come up against a problem. The universe is expanding far too slowly to have grown this big in 14 billion years.

In other words, if you run time backwards so that the universe contracts, the universe does not shrink back to a point. Not by a long way. The discrepancy is some 20 orders of magnitude.

Inflation is the 30-year old theory that explains this mystery. The idea is that in the instants after the Big Bang, high energy quantum processes caused the universe to grow by 20 orders of magnitude in the blink of an eye.

That’s why the universe is so big. Without inflation, the universe could not have grown to its current size, at its current rate of expansion.

Cosmologists have always found this a compelling idea. However, they’ve never had any evidence to back it up. It’s not possible to see that far back in time because light could not travel through the universe at that early time.

There is another way to look back in time though—by looking for ripples in spacetime. So-called gravitational waves are created by extremely violent events such as black holes colliding. This creates ripples in spacetime like a stone landing in water.

The turbulence in the early universe before inflation would also have created gravitational waves, like the surface of water during a storm. The thinking is that, as the universe expanded during inflation, these waves would have dramatically expanded too. Then, when the first light started to spread through the young universe, these waves would have polarised it in ways that ought to be visible now.

Today, we call this light the cosmic microwave background but the way it is polarised is extremely weak. That’s why it has taken so long to spot. But this is exactly the announcement that researchers working on an experiment called BICEP2 made last week, citing it as evidence of gravitational waves from before inflation.

But here’s the crucial question. How do we know that the polarisation is the result of a process that happened before inflation and not one that occurred much later, after inflation?

The BICEP2 team have spent some time studying this question. For the last three years, they’ve tried to rule out everything they can think of from the effects of dust in our galaxy to the gravitational distortions of distant galaxies down to distortions in the telescope used to capture the data. And they’ve managed to rule out all these .

But today, James Dent at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and a couple of pals say the BICEP2 team has overlooked something. They say one possibility is that the polarisation of the cosmic microwave background was indeed caused by gravitational waves just as the BICEP2 team claim, but that these waves formed after inflation, not before it.

Here’s how. For the last few years, cosmologists have discussed what happened in the moments after inflation, as the universe began to cool. It was during this time that the universe we know ‘condensed’ out of the high energy maelstrom generated in the Big Bang.

In particular, as the universe cooled, the fundamental forces we see now, such as the weak and strong nuclear forces and the electromagnetic force, formed in processes called phase changes, just as ice forms as water cools below a critical temperature or as a magnetic field within a material aligns as it cools below a critical temperature.

What’s interesting about phase changes is that they don’t form across the entire material at the same instant. In a cooling magnet, for example, the magnetic field forms in different regions which then spontaneously align when the temperature cools below the critical point. Only then does a uniform field fill the entire material.

Many cosmologists think that the same kind of phases changes occurred in the universe after inflation. Each phase change began in different regions at slightly different times.

But as the entire universe cooled, the fields in these regions would have spontaneously aligned, filling the universe with the same properties at that instant.

This self-ordering process would have been hugely violent, generating its own gravitational waves that rippled through spacetime, albeit after inflation. Could this process be responsible for the polarisation that the BICEP2 team has measured?

According to Dent and co, it could. “Unfortunately, the [BICEP2 measurement] falls just short of ruling out this other source as the dominant contribution of the observed effect,” they say.

So the big announcement last week was premature. And before it can be confirmed, the BICEP2 team has some work ahead of it to rule out the possibility that self ordering in the early universe could be responsible.

Dent and co point out that it’s actually a close run thing—that a small improvement in the data could firmly rule out self-ordering as the origin of the signal.

And they are sympathetic. “It is perhaps frustrating that the current observation cannot unambiguously rule out this toy model straw man as a source of gravitational waves that could polarize the Cosmic Microwave Background signal as observed by BICEP2,” they say.

But that is the process of science. It’s impossible to prove that an explanation for a set of data is true. However, it is possible to rule out other explanations because they don’t match the data. So the BICEP2 team has to rule out all other possible explanations until there is only one left.

Only then can there be unambiguous agreement.

It’s important to recognise that the new new dispute is in no way evidence that inflation did not occur. Indeed, most cosmologists including Dent and co, think it is the most likely explanation for the universe we see today.

However, the BICEP2 data does not yet provide unambiguous evidence for it. As Dent and co put it: “It is important to demonstrate that other possible sources cannot account for the current BICEP2 data before definitely claiming Inflation has been proved.”

And,that may require significantly more data, painstakingly gathered and analysed by the BICEP2 team and others.

In other words, put the champagne back in the fridge.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1403.5166 : Killing the Straw Man: Does BICEP Prove Inflation?

Flowing through Creation and Expressing

OK, time for imagination. Imagine something that is aware and is everything. It is even a part of the material. Material is actually structured out of it. I have a saying, that we are not separate from god (or whatever term you want to use), we are actually merged with it, a part of it, we ARE it. Everything is it. The localized shape of it determines its structure/function. The localized structure/function of the system of shapes determines how the this thing that is aware and is everything, flows through its own creation and expresses itself.

Distill the essence of concepts like Tao, Indra, Intelligent Design, quantum states, Relativity, archetypes, interstices, dual layer membranes, polarity, spin, fields, charge, on and on.

Distill them all, without taking a snap shot of it all. Let it keep moving. Don't isolate the concepts, merge their motions and motivations. Figure out where the effects bloom from (interstices). Dual layer membranes create localization. Different shapes within moving field/charge allow different archetypes and 'rules'. A formless awareness intelligently designing without thought, just BEING, and flowing through creation in infinite ways, with and without the physical. Blending with the shapes, the shapes guiding how the awareness will express itself, in all ways, in infinite variations and infinite layers of expression.

“Did you lose something?” - My mind. I had set it free, but it must love me because it came back.

I was doing a different kind of work...strange, thinking about it. I have been freeing them from the chains of belief they had created around themselves. This, is exactly what I have been doing...never thought about that before.

There will always be un-knowables...paradox's...because existence is infinite. Mystery, or un-knowables, are the reason for creation. Relationship is the mechanism where-by we can submerge ourselves into Ourselves, in order to experience and further create. Further creation pushes further mysteries...and the mysteries are the carrot dangling before the horse-cart.

Perhaps we are a localized mess, and now our environment, the area of space that we have recently entered, is offering us the opportunity to get back in touch with Source without having to be a do-over.  I am talking literally about our environment, down to its quantum make-up.

Yes, we have had it rough.  Occurrences in the human past that have damaged our souls, caused soul trauma.  On top of that, an ancient environment that created a distortion, a gap that left us without communion with divinity.

If we make it through all this intact, imagine the stories the human experience will have.  Imagine the experience.  Imagine the true 'helpers' we could become with the amount of experiences we have gone through, and made it even though we have been completely lost for so long.  Imagine a creature that cannot know its divine nature, yet having the strength and yearning to struggle to find it again.  I cannot fathom that under-taking, and yet we are living it.

I can't see going through all that we humans have, just to give up and start all over again.  We are a profound species, we just have yet to realize our divinity on a collective level.

I know, I may come from a very different set of beliefs.  I just look at all this and see self-responsibility as the way out.  We are already blended with God.  We are God manifested, like all else in the universe.  We just have lost the means of communion with our divinity, and have realized a harder path than the norm in the universe.

The loneliness swims through waters of isolation
Absolution granted brings light to the dark places
of Cthulhu damaged
Through pattern recognition / intuitive cognition /
Monolithic under siege
Reconciliation through resonating rippling influence
Echoing Spherical Geometry

I am sad at the nature of most humans.  They are so narrow minded, so...righteous, so divisive.  It is not the human condition that is at fault.  It is our particular environment at this stage of development.  Unfortunately, we have had it so hard.  Deeply imbedded soul trauma.

One day, we will all look at every single unique individual and see divinity.  All of our faults, all of our idiosyncrasies, all of our looks, all of our differences...we will look at each other with wonder and delight, and bathe in the uniqueness of being a human.

We will stop demonizing, stop hating, stop blaming, stop lying.  We will love all without hate or vices or blame or violence...but rather accept and love and enjoy the diversity human beings are capable of.  We are a species so profound, that once we evolve above the convolution that is now us, we will look back and see how much we held each other back, and weep at it...and love each other all the more.

Ahhhh, just when I thought I was lost among the insane. Or shall I say inane (an abstract intonation of my decrepit meanderings aloud, not to be interpreted as an insult to the non-existent Perspectives Guild). A wondering cry (far from the often misinterpreted expression of ignorance and more like the boring excuse of innocence) has tickled an ear. A balancing of sentence composure rushing the critique.

Forget about the thoughts and feelings that personal writings evoke in others.  The need to go deep inside to brush a soul discovering is upon me once again, not unlike an old friendly muse.  Write from a place in the mind where words form as easily as storms across the Midwest sky.  Capture it for yourself and in that you will be true.  Do not change it for someone else as most tend to do.

When not practiced enough.

After all my dark thoughts had somehow lit a flame to write upon and burnt itself to the soiled earth (dark thoughts now so far from me) I have found a new muse to quench this dry pen.

I thought to give up, not surrender, but rather move on to other habitats of written repositories. Maybe I shall stay awhile. A sigh breathes life into a muse I once thought dead.

Send a word and build a vision. Send a vision and write an epic.

- Chad Adams

Energy, Momentum, Angular Momentum - Transverse Spins and Evanescent Light Waves

Extraordinary Momentum and Spin Discovered in Evanescent Light Waves by Staff Writers Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Mar 10, 2014
 

Transverse force and torque on a particle in evanescent field generated from a total internal reflection in a glass prism. These reveal the presence of the transverse momentum and spin in the evanescent wave above the prism. Image courtesy RIKEN.

A team of researchers from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS) in Japan has identified unexpected dynamic properties of a type of light wave called evanescent waves. These surprising findings contrast sharply with previous knowledge about light and photons.

The study carried out in the Quantum Condensed Matter Research Group (CEMS, RIKEN, Japan) led by Dr. Franco Nori is published in the journal Nature Communications.

Energy, momentum, and angular momentum are the main dynamic characteristics of physical objects. It is well known that light propagating as an electromagnetic wave or photon carries momentum along the direction of the wave's propagation, and that this momentum is independent of polarization. In addition, light can carry an intrinsic angular momentum, called spin, that is proportional to the degree of circular polarization (helicity), and aligned with the propagation direction.

The RIKEN team analysed the momentum and spin of evanescent electromagnetic waves - a type of light waves that travel close to the surface of material objects and whose intensity decreases exponentially, rather than varying sinusoidally, from the interface where they were formed.

Surprisingly, the researchers found that evanescent waves carry momentum and spin components that are orthogonal to the direction of wave propagation. Moreover, the transverse spin turns out to be independent of polarization and helicity, while the transverse momentum is proportional to the wave helicity.

"Such extraordinary properties, revealed in very basic objects, offer a unique opportunity to investigate and observe fundamental physical features, which were previously hidden in usual propagating light and were considered impossible," says Dr. Konstantin Bliokh, first author of the study. "In addition to a detailed theoretical analysis, we propose and simulate numerically four novel experiments for the detection of the unusual momentum and spin properties of evanescent waves via their interaction with small probe particles," he adds.

These results add a new chapter to the physics of momentum and spin of classical and quantum fields, and predict a number of novel light-matter interaction effects involving evanescent waves.

Extraordinary momentum and spin in evanescent waves; Konstantin Y. Bliokh, Aleksandr Y. Bekshaev, Franco Nori; Nature Communications, 2014 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms4300

Spin Creates Dynamic Systems and Life Organizing Properties

Pinwheel 'Living' Crystals and the Origin of Life
by Staff Writers Ann Arbor MI (SPX) Feb 26, 2014

U-M researchers have found in a simulation that simply inducing nanoparticles to spin causes them to self assemble into 'living rotating crystals.' The size and direction of the arrows indicate the movements of the particles, while the yellow and blue colors represent clockwise and counterclockwise spinners, respectively. The arrows arranged in orderly grids are particles that have formed rotating crystals, while the large, aligned arrows at the boundaries show how particles are driven along the interfaces. Image courtesy Sharon Glotzer.

Simply making nanoparticles spin coaxes them to arrange themselves into what University of Michigan researchers call 'living rotating crystals' that could serve as a nanopump. They may also, incidentally, shed light on the origin of life itself.

The researchers refer to the crystals as 'living' because they, in a sense, take on a life of their own from very simple rules.

Sharon Glotzer, the Stuart W. Churchill Collegiate Professor of Chemical Engineering, and her team found that when they spun individual nanoparticles in a simulation-some clockwise and some counterclockwise-the particles self-assembled into an intricate architecture.

The team discovered the behavior while investigating methods to make particles self-assemble-one of the major challenges in nanotechnology-without complicated procedures. When the pieces are a thousand times smaller than a grain of sand, normal techniques for building structures are no longer effective.

For this reason, researchers like Glotzer are exploring ways to make order develop naturally from disorder, much like what may have occurred at the very beginnings of life.

"If we can understand that, not only can we begin to imagine new ways to make materials and devices, but also we may begin to understand how the first living structures emerged from a soup of chemicals," said Glotzer, who is also a professor of materials science and engineering, macromolecular science and engineering, physics, and applied physics.

"One way biology approaches the challenge of assembly is by constantly feeding building blocks with energy. So, that's what we did with nanoparticles."

Recently, researchers in the field have found that if particles are given energy for some basic motion, such as moving in one direction, they can begin to influence one another, forming groups. Glotzer's team looked at what would happen if the particles all were made to rotate.

"They organize themselves," said Daphne Klotsa, a research fellow in Glotzer's lab. "They developed collective dynamics that we couldn't have foreseen."

The team's computer simulation can be imagined as two sets of pinwheels on an air hockey table. The air pushing up from the table drives some of the pinwheels clockwise, and others counterclockwise. When the pinwheels are tightly packed enough that their blades catch on one another, the team found that they begin to divide themselves into clockwise and counter-clockwise spinners-a self-organizing behavior known among researchers as phase separation.

"The important finding here is that we get phase separation without real attraction," Klotsa said.

She calls the self-sorting counterintuitive because no direct forces push the same-spin pinwheels together or push opposite-spinners apart.

The separation occurs because of the way the pinwheel blades collide. While a pair of pinwheels may be spinning in the same direction, where their blades might meet, they're actually moving in opposite directions. This means that the blades will push into one another and stick together, causing the pair of pinwheels to rotate as one, at least briefly.

In contrast, the blades of opposite spinners are moving in the same direction where they meet, so they don't stick together. Since same-spinning pinwheels spend more time linked up, they gradually accumulate into groups.

When the pinwheels divide into clockwise and counterclockwise tribes, the boundary between the groups becomes a thoroughfare for particles in the mix that aren't spinning. The blades at the boundary push these nonspinning particles along the border, making them less likely to dive back into the denser collections of pinwheels. The team said this phenomenon could potentially be harnessed as a sort of nanopump to transport objects in a device.

While the computer simulations were in two dimensions, as though on a flat surface, the team anticipates that rotating particles could also grow into 'living,' three-dimensional crystals. The particles would be free to turn their spin axes in any direction, so they could eventually form a 3D liquid crystal with aligned axes.

The results appeared online in this week's issue of Physical Review Letters and will be presented at a March 6 meeting of the American Physical Society. This work was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

The Edge of Chaos and Consciousness

To understand anything, one must know the patterns.

Complexity is nested within patterns.  Discover the Patterns and Complexity is simplified.

Chaos is a precursor to aligning spins. It is new groups of spin states that are attempting to fractalize.  Once spins stabilize within various systems, crystalline lattices are formed following the chaos-to-order first step: becoming fractal.

Probing the edge of chaos
by Staff Writers
Heidelberg, Germany (SPX) Mar 03, 2014

File image: central limit theorem.

The edge of chaos-right before chaos sets in-is a unique place. It is found in many dynamical systems that cross the boundary between a well-behaved dynamics and a chaotic one...

...Now, physicists have shown that the distribution-or frequency of occurrence-of the variables constituting the physical characteristics of such systems at the edge of chaos has a very different shape than previously reported distributions.

In probability theory, the central limit theorem was first developed by an 18th century French mathematician named Abraham de Moivre.

It applies to independent random physical quantities or variables, each with a well-defined expected value and well-defined way of varying. This theorem states that once iterated a sufficiently large number of times, these variable physical quantities will be approximately distributed along a central limit-also referred to as the attractor. In chaotic and standard random systems, such distribution is in the shape of a bell curve.

Now, new central limit theorems are emerging for more complex physical processes, such as natural phenomena. In this study, the authors took existing knowledge of the specific position of the attractor at the edge of chaos.

To do so, they employed a mathematical formula called the logistic map as a particular example of the dynamic system under study. They found that the distribution of physical properties of such dynamic systems at this specific point at the edge of chaos has a fractal structure not previously known.

M. A. Fuentes and A. Robledo (2014), Sums of variables at the onset of chaos, European Physical Journal B, DOI 10.1140/epjb/e2014-40882-1

Charge and magnetism with angular motion creating torus shapes of integer and half-integer spins inverting/reverting of the laterally spinning skein of the flowing torus:
Which is reminiscent of 'Klein Bottle' aspects:

These graphics do not show the overall field influences attributed to dipole magnetic charges, but we can imagine the overlapping magnetic field spins of multiple torus and their radiating influences that create areas of synergy, that when resonating harmonically, create something similar to standing waves within/without standing waves - thus fractal, as touched on in this beautifully written article about the Amplituhedron: Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics.  Coalescence throughout and within its parts/wholes (inverting/reverting nature of spin and magnetism) the influencing quantum spin states create relationship and organization that is life-like, moving and adjusting though still with 'membrane' areas of dual layer spin states, which can be read about here:

Pinwheel 'Living' Crystals and the Origin of Life
by Staff Writers Ann Arbor MI (SPX) Feb 26, 2014

U-M researchers have found in a simulation that simply inducing nanoparticles to spin causes them to self assemble into 'living rotating crystals.' The size and direction of the arrows indicate the movements of the particles, while the yellow and blue colors represent clockwise and counterclockwise spinners, respectively. The arrows arranged in orderly grids are particles that have formed rotating crystals, while the large, aligned arrows at the boundaries show how particles are driven along the interfaces. Image courtesy Sharon Glotzer.

Recently, researchers in the field have found that if particles are given energy for some basic motion, such as moving in one direction, they can begin to influence one another, forming groups. Glotzer's team looked at what would happen if the particles all were made to rotate.

"They organize themselves," said Daphne Klotsa, a research fellow in Glotzer's lab. "They developed collective dynamics that we couldn't have foreseen."

The team's computer simulation can be imagined as two sets of pinwheels on an air hockey table. The air pushing up from the table drives some of the pinwheels clockwise, and others counterclockwise. When the pinwheels are tightly packed enough that their blades catch on one another, the team found that they begin to divide themselves into clockwise and counter-clockwise spinners-a self-organizing behavior known among researchers as phase separation.

"The important finding here is that we get phase separation without real attraction," Klotsa said.
She calls the self-sorting counterintuitive because no direct forces push the same-spin pinwheels together or push opposite-spinners apart.

The separation occurs because of the way the pinwheel blades collide. While a pair of pinwheels may be spinning in the same direction, where their blades might meet, they're actually moving in opposite directions. This means that the blades will push into one another and stick together, causing the pair of pinwheels to rotate as one, at least briefly.

In contrast, the blades of opposite spinners are moving in the same direction where they meet, so they don't stick together. Since same-spinning pinwheels spend more time linked up, they gradually accumulate into groups.

When the pinwheels divide into clockwise and counterclockwise tribes, the boundary between the groups becomes a thoroughfare for particles in the mix that aren't spinning. The blades at the boundary push these nonspinning particles along the border, making them less likely to dive back into the denser collections of pinwheels. The team said this phenomenon could potentially be harnessed as a sort of nanopump to transport objects in a device.

All that is left is to find consciousness within these emerging quantum fractal spin states (amplituhedron) of attraction and repulsion and life-like organization.

Communication or rejection of communication is determined by resonance between proteins and their resonant ability to pass on information (info in the form of motion; sound, EM radiation, etc.).

Bacteria's Protein-Based 'Living Wires' Allow Electron Transference throughout Protein by use of Electricity
(Hugging Hemes Help Electrons Hop)
 by Mary Beckman for PNNL News Richland WA (SPX) Jan 23, 2014

Numbered heme groups (in color) lie within MtrF protein's framework (in gray) and shuttle electrons from one end of the protein to the other.

Within the bacteria's protein-based wire, molecular groups called hemes communicate with each other to allow electrons to hop along the chain like stepping stones. The researchers found that evolution has set the protein up so that, generally, when the electron's drive to hop is high, the heme stepping stones are less tightly connected, like being farther apart; when the drive to hop is low, the hemes are more closely connected, like being closer together. The outcome is an even electron flow along the wire.

This is the first time scientists have seen this evolutionary design principle for electron transport, the researchers reported Jan. 2 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition Online.

Living Wires Certain bacteria breathe using metal like people use oxygen. In the process, these bacteria steal electrons from carbon and ultimately transfer the electrons to metals or minerals in the ground. They do this by conducting electricity along molecular wires built into proteins, moving internal electrons to the outside of their cells. Researchers hope to use these bacteria in little biologic batteries or fuel cells.

But a living wire is not the same as those that make up our powerlines. Electrons in powerlines hurtle down the wire, moving smoothly from metal atom to metal atom. Electrons traveling in a living wire must get from one complex heme group to the next. The hemes are situated within a protein, and not all hemes are made the same.

Some hemes hold onto electrons tightly and others let electrons slip away easily. Depending on how the hemes are lined up, this can create energetic hills that electrons have a hard time climbing over, or energetic valleys that electrons easily march across.

The team found that instead of a smooth ride through the protein, electrons lurch through hemes: Sometimes the driving force makes the electrons march across a valley and the electrons move quickly. In other pairs the electrons face a hill, and electron travel gets delayed.

Mapping how tightly hemes couple to each other along with the driving force values, the team found that hemes were less tightly coupled when electrons enjoyed traipsing across a valley and more tightly coupled when electrons had to slog uphill.
Reference: Marian Breuer, Kevin M. Rosso, and Jochen Blumberger. Electron flow in multiheme bacterial cytochromes is a balancing act between heme electronic interaction and redox potentials, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, Early Edition online January 2, 2014. doi:10.1073/pnas.1316156111.

These fractal/holographic quantum manifestations spinning into material existence are structured by various spin states and organized into higher complex organic 'fields', first determined by complexity of spin states (Pinwheel 'Living' Crystals and the Origin of Life) - and acquiring more complex spin states developing towards a specific pattern of complexity that can access and then process [i]through [/i]protein as information into cells via electron transport via electricity and frequency rates.

The Symphony of Life, Revealed
by Staff Writers Buffalo NY (SPX) Jan 21, 2014

Using a new imaging technique they developed, scientists have managed to observe and document the vibrations of lysozyme, an antibacterial protein found in many animals. This graphic visualizes the vibrations in lysozyme as it is excited by terahertz light (depicted by the red wave arrow). Such vibrations, long thought to exist, have never before been described in such detail, said lead researcher Andrea Markelz, a UB physicist. Credit: Credit: Andrea Markelz and Katherine Niessen.

To observe the protein vibrations, Markelz' team relied on an interesting characteristic of proteins: The fact that they vibrate at the same frequency as the light they absorb...

...So, to study vibrations in lysozyme, Markelz and her colleagues exposed a sample to light of different frequencies and polarizations, and measured the types of light the protein absorbed...

..."If you tap on a bell, it rings for some time, and with a sound that is specific to the bell. This is how the proteins behave," Markelz said. "Many scientists have previously thought a protein is more like a wet sponge than a bell: If you tap on a wet sponge, you don't get any sustained sound."

Markelz said the team's technique for studying vibrations could be used in the future to document how natural and artificial inhibitors stop proteins from performing vital functions by blocking desired vibrations.

"We can now try to understand the actual structural mechanisms behind these biological processes and how they are controlled," Markelz said.

"The cellular system is just amazing," she said. "You can think of a cell as a little machine that does lots of different things - it senses, it makes more of itself, it reads and replicates DNA, and for all of these things to occur, proteins have to vibrate and interact with one another."

Which leads us finally to microtubules within the human brain, and how consciousness is somehow rising through the quantum states of resonance interacting through uncountable 'pulses' and echoes mainly encased within the skull.

Consciousness is everywhere.

Discovery of Quantum Vibrations in 'Microtubules' Corroborates Theory of Consciousness

The recent discovery of warm temperature quantum vibrations in microtubules inside brain neurons by the research group led by Anirban Bandyopadhyay, PhD, at the National Institute of Material Sciences in Tsukuba, Japan (and now at MIT), corroborates the pair's theory and suggests that EEG rhythms also derive from deeper level microtubule vibrations.

A review and update of a controversial 20-year-old theory of consciousness published in Physics of Life Reviews claims that consciousness derives from deeper level, finer scale activities inside brain neurons. The recent discovery of quantum vibrations in "microtubules" inside brain neurons corroborates this theory, according to review authors Stuart Hameroff and Sir Roger Penrose.

They suggest that EEG rhythms (brain waves) also derive from deeper level microtubule vibrations, and that from a practical standpoint, treating brain microtubule vibrations could benefit a host of mental, neurological, and cognitive conditions.

They suggested that quantum vibrational computations in microtubules were "orchestrated" ("Orch") by synaptic inputs and memory stored in microtubules, and terminated by Penrose "objective reduction" ('OR'), hence "Orch OR." Microtubules are major components of the cell structural skeleton.

The recent discovery of warm temperature quantum vibrations in microtubules inside brain neurons by the research group led by Anirban Bandyopadhyay, PhD, at the National Institute of Material Sciences in Tsukuba, Japan (and now at MIT), corroborates the pair's theory and suggests that EEG rhythms also derive from deeper level microtubule vibrations.

In addition, work from the laboratory of Roderick G. Eckenhoff, MD, at the University of Pennsylvania, suggests that anesthesia, which selectively erases consciousness while sparing non-conscious brain activities, acts via microtubules in brain neurons.

"The origin of consciousness reflects our place in the universe, the nature of our existence. Did consciousness evolve from complex computations among brain neurons, as most scientists assert? Or has consciousness, in some sense, been here all along, as spiritual approaches maintain?" ask Hameroff and Penrose in the current review.

"This opens a potential Pandora's Box, but our theory accommodates both these views, suggesting consciousness derives from quantum vibrations in microtubules, protein polymers inside brain neurons, which both govern neuronal and synaptic function, and connect brain processes to self-organizing processes in the fine scale, 'proto-conscious' quantum structure of reality."

After 20 years of skeptical criticism, "the evidence now clearly supports Orch OR," continue Hameroff and Penrose. "Our new paper updates the evidence, clarifies Orch OR quantum bits, or "qubits," as helical pathways in microtubule lattices, rebuts critics, and reviews 20 testable predictions of Orch OR published in 1998 - of these, six are confirmed and none refuted."

- Chad Adams

Bacteria's Protein-Based 'Living Wires' Allow Electron Transference throughout Protein by use of Electricity

Hugging Hemes Help Electrons Hop 
by Mary Beckman for PNNL News Richland WA (SPX) Jan 23, 2014

Numbered heme groups (in color) lie within MtrF protein's framework (in gray) and shuttle electrons from one end of the protein to the other.

Researchers simulating how certain bacteria run electrical current through tiny molecular wires have discovered a secret Nature uses for electron travel. The results are key to understanding how the bacteria do chemistry in the ground, and will help researchers use them in microbial fuel cells, batteries, or for turning waste into electricity.

Within the bacteria's protein-based wire, molecular groups called hemes communicate with each other to allow electrons to hop along the chain like stepping stones. The researchers found that evolution has set the protein up so that, generally, when the electron's drive to hop is high, the heme stepping stones are less tightly connected, like being farther apart; when the drive to hop is low, the hemes are more closely connected, like being closer together. The outcome is an even electron flow along the wire.

This is the first time scientists have seen this evolutionary design principle for electron transport, the researchers reported Jan. 2 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition Online.

"We were perplexed at how weak the thermodynamic driving force was between some of these hemes," said geochemist Kevin Rosso of the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. "But it turns out those pairs of hemes are essentially hugging each other. When the driving force is strong between hemes, they are only shaking hands. We've never seen this compensation scheme before, but it seems that the purpose is to allow the protein to transfer electrons with a steady flow along heme wires."

Living Wires Certain bacteria breathe using metal like people use oxygen. In the process, these bacteria steal electrons from carbon and ultimately transfer the electrons to metals or minerals in the ground. They do this by conducting electricity along molecular wires built into proteins, moving internal electrons to the outside of their cells. Researchers hope to use these bacteria in little biologic batteries or fuel cells.

But a living wire is not the same as those that make up our powerlines. Electrons in powerlines hurtle down the wire, moving smoothly from metal atom to metal atom. Electrons traveling in a living wire must get from one complex heme group to the next. The hemes are situated within a protein, and not all hemes are made the same.

Some hemes hold onto electrons tightly and others let electrons slip away easily. Depending on how the hemes are lined up, this can create energetic hills that electrons have a hard time climbing over, or energetic valleys that electrons easily march across.

Some hemes, such as those that carry oxygen in people's red blood cells, are well-studied. The hemes and proteins creating a current in bacteria, though, have only been coming to light within the last few years. Recently, researchers figured out what a particular protein-MtrF-that makes up a molecular wire looks like, but that information alone is not enough to determine how the electrons traverse the chain of internal heme groups.

So, armed with the structure of the protein, Rosso and colleagues Jochen Blumberger and Marian Breuer from the University College London used high-powered computers to simulate the positions and movement of the hemes in MtrF and how they transfer electrons between themselves.

Electron Crossroads
Using resources at both the UK's High Performance Computing Facility and EMSL, the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory at PNNL, the team first modeled the average position of the 10 hemes within MtrF. Eight of the hemes run down the center of the protein. The remaining two hemes branch off the main eight, creating a four-heme road that crosses the middle of the protein.

Because hemes have to pass electrons to each other, the team examined them in pairs. The team found that MtrF arranges its heme pairs in one of three ways: perpendicular to each other, side-by-side, or stacked on top of each other. Each arrangement positions the hemes at different distances from and orientations to each other.

Then the team gauged how urgently an electron wants to get from one heme to the next by determining the theoretical "Gibbs free energy" between the pairs. This value is an indicator of the driving force of the electrons.

The team found that instead of a smooth ride through the protein, electrons lurch through hemes: Sometimes the driving force makes the electrons march across a valley and the electrons move quickly. In other pairs the electrons face a hill, and electron travel gets delayed.

Mapping how tightly hemes couple to each other along with the driving force values, the team found that hemes were less tightly coupled when electrons enjoyed traipsing across a valley and more tightly coupled when electrons had to slog uphill.

"The computer simulations allowed us to break the wire down into how each step is possible and how fast each step is. Then we saw that the protein arranges its hemes in weak and strong couplings to compensate for the energetic hills and valleys," said Rosso. "This is one way to make the electron hops consistent to efficiently get them where they need to go."

This compensation scheme led the team to wonder why the hills and valleys are there in the first place.

"We think the variation in driving force between the hills and the valleys helps the protein interact with other components in the environment," said Rosso. The tops of the hills could be exit points to higher energy electron acceptors in the environment, such as molecules that shuttle electrons elsewhere.

Scientists don't yet know how multiple heme proteins-including others beyond MtrF-work in concert to make these molecular wires connect end-to-end, but the results give hints as to which hemes are possible entry and exit points in MtrF. So the results also give clues to how multiple proteins might be connected.

This work was supported by the Department of Energy Office of Science. Support for use of the UK's High Performance Computing Facility was provided by the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Additional support was provided by the Royal Society.

Reference: Marian Breuer, Kevin M. Rosso, and Jochen Blumberger. Electron flow in multiheme bacterial cytochromes is a balancing act between heme electronic interaction and redox potentials, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, Early Edition online January 2, 2014. doi:10.1073/pnas.1316156111.

Measuring Schrodinger's Cat - Pet Gently, then Snap a Picture that Collapses the WaveFunction

Peeking into Schrodinger's Box by Staff Writers Rochester NY (SPX) Jan 23, 2014

'A schematic of the experimental setup using a HeNe laser, lenses, beam-splitters, wave-plates, a fan-out hologram and other tools. Light can be thought of as a spiral and the orbital-angular-momentum quantum number describes how "twisted" this spiral is. The weak measurement setup shows how this spiral is "untwisted" before it is measured. Image courtesy M. Malik/Nature Communications'.

Until recently measuring a 27-dimensional quantum state would have been a time-consuming, multistage process using a technique called quantum tomography, which is similar to creating a 3D image from many 2D ones. Researchers at the University of Rochester have been able to apply a recently developed, alternative method called direct measurement to do this in a single experiment with no post-processing.

The work is of interest because fast, accurate and efficient methods for characterizing high-dimensional states like this could be central in developing high security quantum communications systems, as well as to probe our fundamental understanding of quantum mechanics.

The work was published this week in Nature Communications by a team of researchers from the University of Rochester and the University of Glasgow. In the paper they demonstrate direct measurements of the quantum state associated with the orbital-angular momentum.

"Our work shows that direct measurement offers an exciting alternative to quantum tomography," said Robert Boyd, Professor of Optics and Physics at the University of Rochester and Canada Excellence Research Chair in Quantum Nonlinear Optics at the University of Ottawa.

"As the field of quantum information continues to advance, we expect direct measurement to play an increasingly important role in this." Boyd added that although it is unclear exactly how much more efficient direct measurement is compared to quantum tomography, the lack of post-processing is a major factor in speeding-up direct measurements.

The direct measurement technique offers a way to directly determine the state of a quantum system. It was first developed in 2011 by scientists at the National Research Council Canada, who used it to determine the position and momentum of photons.

Last year, a group of Rochester/Ottawa researchers led by Boyd showed that direct measurement could be applied to measure the polarization states of light. The new paper is the first time this method has been applied to a discrete, high dimensional system.

Such direct measurements of the wavefunction might have appeared to be ruled out by the uncertainty principle - the idea that certain properties of a quantum system could be known with precision only if other properties were known poorly. However, direct measurement involves a "trick" that makes it possible.
Direct measurements consists of two types of measurements performed one after the other, first a "weak" measurement followed by a "strong" measurement.

In quantum mechanics the act of measuring a quantum state disturbs it irreversibly, a phenomenon referred to as collapse of the wavefunction. The trick lies with the first measurement being so gentle that it only slightly disturbs the system and does not cause the wavefunction to collapse.

"It is sort of like peeking into the box to see if Schrodinger's cat is alive, without fully opening the box," said lead author Dr. Mehul Malik, currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Vienna and who was a Ph.D. in Boyd's group when the work was performed.

"The weak measurement is essentially a bad measurement, which leaves you mostly uncertain about whether the cat is alive or dead.

It does, however, give partial information on the health of the cat, which when repeated many times can lead to near certain information as to whether the cat is alive or dead." Malik adds that the beauty of the weak measurement is that it does not destroy the system, unlike most standard measurements of a quantum system, allowing a subsequent measurement-the "strong" measurement of the other variable.

This sequence of weak and strong measurements is then repeated for multiple identically prepared quantum systems, until the wave function is known with the required precision.

Ph.D. student Mohammad Mirhosseini was also part of the Rochester team. Other collaborators included Professor Miles Padgett and Martin Lavery from the University of Glasgow, UK, and Dr. Jonathan Leach, from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK.

Dynamic Systems, like Nature, are Fractal

Probing the Edge of Chaos by Staff Writers Heidelberg, Germany (SPX) Mar 03, 2014

File image: central limit theorem.

The edge of chaos-right before chaos sets in-is a unique place. It is found in many dynamical systems that cross the boundary between a well-behaved dynamics and a chaotic one.

Now, physicists have shown that the distribution-or frequency of occurrence-of the variables constituting the physical characteristics of such systems at the edge of chaos has a very different shape than previously reported distributions.

The results, by Miguel Angel Fuentes from the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, USA, and Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile, and Alberto Robledo from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City, are published in EPJ B. This could help us better understand natural phenomena with a chaotic nature.

In probability theory, the central limit theorem was first developed by an 18th century French mathematician named Abraham de Moivre.

It applies to independent random physical quantities or variables, each with a well-defined expected value and well-defined way of varying. This theorem states that once iterated a sufficiently large number of times, these variable physical quantities will be approximately distributed along a central limit-also referred to as the attractor. In chaotic and standard random systems, such distribution is in the shape of a bell curve.

Now, new central limit theorems are emerging for more complex physical processes, such as natural phenomena. In this study, the authors took existing knowledge of the specific position of the attractor at the edge of chaos.

To do so, they employed a mathematical formula called the logistic map as a particular example of the dynamic system under study. They found that the distribution of physical properties of such dynamic systems at this specific point at the edge of chaos has a fractal structure not previously known.

M. A. Fuentes and A. Robledo (2014), Sums of variables at the onset of chaos, European Physical Journal B, DOI 10.1140/epjb/e2014-40882-1